Also, I think most of the announcements that are currently in the Greeters Station area are outdated, and should probably be moved to an announcement archive somewhere within this eplaya feedback folder.

I have, SB, but it's not an issue of only wanting to see certain topics. It's an issue of being completely bombarded visually upon entrance to the board. I don't want to create a priority rating for the threads for myself, but instead want to not have epileptic fits when I look at the index page. I think it's highly uninviting, daunting, and confusing, even for someone who generally knows the basic flow of the board (I know that if I wanna discuss something like this, I have to find the feedback threads, but newbies may not).

I agree, I've been using these boards since they started in the current Phbb format and I've never had more difficulty navigating them than I have since the last roll out. I would love to see 5 or 6 main categories and then just let the threads fall behnind those. Something like:

I realize that my opinion is con-with-no-clear-suggestions-for-fixing. I apologize for that, but don't really feel adept enough to come up with something myself. I can harken back and say that of all the things I've seen so far, I still like Trey's mockup from before the eplaya went live again.

I like the idea of having something simple, perhaps with a one-line description underneath, on the index page. My personal opinion...

I realize that they put "Greeters Station" on top and even added "Start Here" but it still seems to me that a new user might not know what a "Greeter" is if they haven't been to the event before and might not click on it to get information.

Might that information better be done in a different format (like a sticky at the top of each folder?)

About the naming, a lot of work was put into the development of the main site, and the intention was to have links from there into the relevant sections of the eplaya. Some of the naming and topics were specifically asked for by org peeps so they know where to go to answer any q's. I think bex is doing that with ticket info, and cameragirl recently answered something on rideshares. Thats why you see some shared naming.

The Start Here Topic was meant to be filled in with other relevant information, including the link you see to the "Hello and Welcome..." introductions thread.

What you mention with the sticky thread has been mentioned before, even by me. That idea was to have the overall rules and links (maybe site-map?) in the main Start Here topic, then a second sticky topic in each main sub-topic for specific info and rules that may apply to just that topic.

either he misunderstood the question, you misunderstood his answer, or someone (possibly, but unlikely me) doesn't know what they're tralking about. the plethora of existing bbs fora which do this (of which this is one example) should be evidence enough.

i have realized that, aside from the simplicity and allowing for organic growth factors i mentioned earlier, part of what drives me nuts about the current layout is the "too many pockets" effect. if i have 3 pockets in my clothes, they fill up with stuff, but i can find what i'm looking for pretty quickly. if i have a dozen or more, i get frustrated trying to find something that i had just put in them. even if half of them are empty, or don't have stuff i want, i still end up looking through them and get frustrated in the process. similarly, i can't find or remember where the interesting content here is, to the end result that i juts haven't bothered aside from peeking in on the "policy discussion" section maybe once a week. i know i'm just another data point, but the tangle of categories, even if they're all visible at once, obscures the content i want to get at underneath. it's like playing 3 card monte with half a deck of cards...

... part of what drives me nuts about the current layout is the "too many pockets" effect. if i have 3 pockets in my clothes, they fill up with stuff, but i can find what i'm looking for pretty quickly. if i have a dozen or more, i get frustrated trying to find something that i had just put in them.

I can see that. But what about getting too many things accumulated under one topic? As an example viewforum.php?f=3 currently has 26 pages of topics.

theCryptofishist wrote: I'd say "anything pre-(chosen date) and more geared towards community and joking around. Useful threads are worth keeping nad threads about the philosopical yeas and neays of children (for instance) are issues that are gonna keep coming up again, so we may want to keep the old discussions and build on them. Maybe trying to prune to a pre-set number of topic pages (4 perhaps) would mean that we get rid of enough dead wood without killing the tree.

How does this sound for a start?

- a general date to start from for chatty or purely social topics
- need an understanding of what topics are important to keep intact

I need feedback from people on what and where before I touch anything.

The March 2005 Year Edition of the Eplaya Index is impressive. As imperfect as anything, the Hierarchy of Forums seems stable- Seven trunks, branching to one, two, or three arteries that then branch to the provinces of topics: The Index hierarchy encompass a lot of area without being too big. I see its elegance, perhaps, in the number seven- seven trail-heads. Humans innately like the number seven as well as the number three. We see the elegance in simplicity. Sometimes this is enough. Perhaps for these reasons, the Index page is intuitive. It really came out nice. This certainly reflects well today on the Eplaya Team whom did assemble it so. See the Index page for yourself. It does a good job.

At the provincial level, where the list of topics is at, the Admins and Moderators should collar themselves at the no-slack end of a chain made of gold. An Admin or Moderator can easily break the chain, only to be seen as a mad-dog on the loose. At the provincial level, topic names will range all over the place, from the opaque and the inane, to the significant and the deliberate, to the pointless, the mispelled, the mischievous, to the normal, to the drab, to the functional, to the fab, to the fecund. And the numbers of Topics that a user will have to page through to scan it all will possibly range into the infinity of fear's oblivion. Unfortunately, it will be in our own fascist nature to want to clean up these provinces, to make order out of apparent chaos, to fence it in, for the good of everyoneelse. Some users will promote a much needed cleansing of this board with all the drama of falling down a hill! It's at these times that an Admin or Moderator should appreciate their being tied by the gold chain- The Admin or Moderator is no user's agent.

The provinces of Eplaya, by their own nature, will always be jungles. You can't tame a jungle, except by cutting it down to extinction . We very well know, that the lively life is in the jungle, where things eat and things get eaten. We're newbies every day . User feedback that advocates the taming of the jungle for the sake of the newbies is ignorant and harmful advice. We're here because we're self-reliant and because we want to be here. And regardless of all our engineering, we're still in a jungle of humanity where our crude nature resides. We can make a better BBS. But beware the fascist pipedream of creating a perfect order in concrete. The jungle is much more alive.

The Admins and Moderators can only do so much. Topics can and should be moved to their appropriate classes, if caught quickly enough. As far as pruning threads goes, that's a Fool's errand. Pruning topics bordersoncensorship. (Censorship is not an accusation, censorship is a dynamic of awareness of supression.) Pruning doesn't really do any good. How threads are born and die and live to die again is its own ironic mystery. At a point, it's better to apply Admin efforts toward the Search engine. The Search engine improves either by improving the software or by simply improving people's training to find and use the Search Engine effectively.

Since it's all gone to shit already for this year, here's a couple of suggestions for next year, or the next time you guys decide to screw around with the topic structure:

When I've told people how to find to a particular eplaya discussion, I've done it by giving directions rather than an encoded URL. It just makes more sense, by way of trying to help familiarize people with where to find information rather than spoon-feeding them a blind link -- or it did when the topic titles were shorter and punchier. IMO any location in the eplaya hierarchy should be able to be described on one typical line of email text (ie <= 76 characters). The URLs on the main website pretty much conform to this, btw. Note the difference between

Also, I'm sure the multitude of chatty-cathy topics are great for fans of the eplaya as a chat room, but the "Q & A, Tips and Tricks" topic area is getting pretty crowded with more specific techie topics alongside the newbie posts. When there was a top-most newbie area, and a separate structures & camping tech area, it seemed to make more sense.

Good point, great example and I think there was a different reason for Burning Man for the other 51 weeks that was due to restructuring. I wish I knew what that was, because its an added 34 characters that completely throws me off.

the "Q & A, Tips and Tricks" topic area is getting pretty crowded with more specific techie topics alongside the newbie posts. When there was a top-most newbie area, and a separate structures & camping tech area, it seemed to make more sense.

Dont know what you mean by 'top-most newbie area'? Do you mean creating sub-topics under Q & A, Tips and Tricks?

I actually think moving the Hello and Welcome... What's your name? Tell me about You... newbie/intro sticky topic out of there and keeping it in theGreeters Station: Start Here would be nice.